Sunday, May 24, 2009

Finally, we have some order!

The concept of queuing is one well known to us Brits – we love them. Very little annoys us more than somebody who jumps to the front of a queue after we’ve been standing patiently in line for our turn, except maybe being called away just as we make it to the front.

Those of you that have been to Iran will know that Iranians do not know how to queue for anything. Paying bills, shopping, entering/leaving the mosque - its the survival of the fittest, or rather the person with the strongest elbows (to elbow everyone else out of the way!)

So over the last few days, I was amazed to see a queue forming outside the school tuck shop.

Today, as I got to the front of the queue, a girl tried to push in front of me. The kiosk lady refused to serve her and made her join the queue!

Finally :-)

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Teacher's Day Part 2

Teacher's Day is turning into Teacher's week! Today we had a little celebration at school. Our teachers were all made to sit at the front and given flowers. One of the teachers did a little speech to explain the significance of the day.

Teacher's day is the 12th of Ordebehest (2nd month of the Iranian Calender). It's also the death anniversary of Murtaza Mutahiri. You can read more about him on wikipeadia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morteza_Motahari

In her speech, the teacher narrated some funny stories from her years as a Farsi teacher. Not sure how they'll translate into English, but here goes:

A student whose Farsi wasn't very good was trying to book a vehicle to transport a large number of people. The man told her that all the autobuses were booked, but he could send her a minibus. So the student replied: "Don't worry, send whatever bus you have" (bus in Farsi means kiss!)

The other story was from a class. The teacher was giving her students Jumle Saazis (a random word that you have to make a sentence from). The first student was given the word 'gul' (flower), so she said: "Shoma gul hasti" which means you are a flower. The teacher was really chuffed by this! The next student was given the word 'meegh', so the Student number 2 said "Shoma meegh hasti" which means you are a nail!! (the type you hammer into the wall, not finger nail!)

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Layla and Majnoon

My Naurooz fish sadly died shortly after they were bought :-( I didn't even get a chance to photograph Majnoon! Contrary to the actual story of Layla and Majnoon (see a previous post), my fish Majnoon died before Layla, but just like in the story, Layla was very sad after his death and shortly after joined her companion in Fish Heaven.

Here is a picture of Layla:



Teacher's Day

They have lots of 'days' in Iran. Thursday was the birth anniversary of Sayyidda Zainab (Granddaughter of the HolyProphet of Islam) and also 'nurse's day' (I wonder if that includes radiographers??!)

Today was teacher's day. This day had been drilled into us during our Farsi days, so I had marked it on my calender and remembered to bring in little gifts for all my teachers! My English students surprised me with the HUGEST gift I have ever seen! Nicely wrapped, with flowers and a box of shireeni! (Sweet cream cakes)

Didn't get a chance to photograph the cakes - we dusted them at school!!